The Khlongs

In addition to the fabulous brunch, Veronique & Pierre gave me a super trip on the khlongs for my birthday. The khlongs are the canals running off the rivers in Bangkok. There used to be thousands of khlongs, but many have been filled in to make roads.





We went on a two hour trip through a khlong running off the Chao Phraya River, not to far from where they live. All of the khlongs are lined with either houses or Wats. There is a complete world on them - children swimming, people eating on their porches, convenience stores, women washing, clothes drying, people fishing, & even people delivering "take-out" from their boat.






Seriously, there are many people who deliver ready-made meals from their boat. They have a bell/alarm that they ring - somewhat like the "Good Humor" man selling ice cream in the neighborhoods when I was growing up.




It was a delightful trip & since it was end of the afternoon on Sunday, the 27th, it was especially nice since most people were home, relaxing & doing Sunday chores.

Flowers Flowers Everywhere!

The flowers in Bangkok & in Luang Prabang have been lovely. It's not just the flowers themselves, but also the way that the Thai & Lao people create lovely arrangements
and offerings with the flowers. I regret now that I did not take photos of all the people
in the flower market in Bangkok that were taking tiny flowers & stringing them &
making hanging bracelets. You will often see them hanging from the rear-view mirror
in taxis. Veronique & Pierre brought me one of jasmine when they met me at the airport.
I think that they bring good luck.




Speaking of luck, I did buy myself a small Buddha that I hope will watch over me in
Bethesda. Pierre was joking with me in BKK because I often say "En challah" (SP?)
from my Mauritanian days. It means "God willing". He suggested I say "Ench Buddha"
instead. It was funny...but you had to be there!

Back to flowers. Veronique showed me how to make arrangements of lotus flowers.
The petals only open if they are attached to their roots where they grow. In other words, they will not open once they are cut. The idea is to peel & fold each petal until the inner buds are showing. I have some pics of the arrangement at Veronique's.





Now that I know how to arrange lotus flowers, where will I find them in DC?



I am also including pics of some of the arrangements at the hotel in Luang Prabang.

Super Duper Meals

One of my best memories from previous trips to Bangkok, was eating at the buffet at the Oriental Hotel. Not only is the food devine, the buffet sumptuous, but it is the seating outdoors, beside the Chao Praya river that is so special. I wanted take Veronique & Pierre someplace special, so that's where we went on Friday, Jan 25th. The weather was perfect & the sights of all the boats, strung with tiny lights, going back & forth across the river, made the evening & the place totally magical. My camera does not do that well at night, so my photos cannot quite convey the ambiance.




After dinner, we went to Suan Lum Night Bazaar, Bangkok's "first official night bazaar". It's a maze of several thousand stalls. I mean these people shop all the time! I found it hard to be in the mood to shop on a full stomach & ready to go to sleep.
OK...I did force myself to buy a few things!










The next super duper meal was at my return visit to The Blue Elephant Cooking School. Veronique had never been & I wanted to give her something for her birthday in early January.
Needless to say, I loved the school/class as much the second time as I did the first. Since I had already been to the market & Veronique knows all the markets in BKK, we were able to arrive for the class at the civilized hour of 10am. Now I have even more of an inventory of dishes to fix back in Bethesda.

The next best thing to learning how to cook the dishes is the wonderful meal that follows, where we eat all of the dishes that we had prepared. My favorite of the day was a Massuman Curry.
Delicious & very mild. Not sure about the spelling. I just looked it up - it's Massaman Curry.

The last, most super duper meal of all was for my birthday on the 27th. Veronique & Pierre took me to Sunday brunch at the Sukkothai Hotel, which is a gorgeous, contemporary, Zen like hotel.
The brunch was without a doubt the most incredible buffet that I have ever seen, ever, ever, ever & I was pretty impressed by the one that the Durands took me to in Buenos Aires. There was everything from all sorts of salmons (smoked,plain gravlox, gravlox done in beetroot & vodka) to foie gras frais & demi-cuit to every shellfish to every oriental soup to every meat & stew (even osso bucco) to dim sums & then a sushi bar where you could even get a litle bowl of salmon roe.
French cheeses up the wazoo & then an entire room just of deserts.

Enough about food. All my clothes are too tight, but every meal was fabulous.

Wat Pho

I had great plans for the 24th - see the flower market, Chinatown & meet with a astrologist/palm reader at Wat Pho. I took the river taxi to the flower market, walked around but I don't think that I found the real market, just the stalls on the outskirts. I still managed to
see lots of roses and orchids.

I had lunch in Chinatown at a side walk stand - soup with some noodles & seafood. Delicious. I actually felt proud of myself just being able to order anything - point, point, smile, point.




I had an appointment at 3pm with a clarevoyant at Wat Pho. The only Wat that I really wanted to revisit was Wat Pho, which is where you can see the reclining Buddha. The clarevoyant never showed up, which was very disappointing, but I figured that it may have been destiny & that Buddha did not want me to have my fortune told.

The reclining Buddha is gigantic, gold, & gorgeous...and not upside down as the picture on the right shows. I'm not so good at this.

Ayutthaya

Veronique & Pierre took me to Ayutthaya the other day. It is approx 1-2 hours north of Bangkok.
It was the ancient capital of Thailand in the 14th century until it was ransacked by the Burmese in the 18th century, at which time the capital was moved to Bangkok.



In its time of promenance, there were more than 500 temples (Wats) in the area of Ayutthaya. It was a very important port of commerce & in the 16th & 17th centuries it was one of the most important trading centers in Asia. Traders from all over Asia, Europe & the Arab world would come there. The foreign traders actually had their own " 'hoods" - the King gave them land to settle on. There are still remains of the Japanese Village & artifacts from the Portuguese Village.



I did not get to see all of the ruins, as heat led to fatigue & I became quickly "watted out", as the girls & I used to say in our trip to Thailand in 1999. We could only manage to see a few of the Wats in Bangkok & Cecile coined the phrase "watted out".






You can see from the photos that the ruins are really spectacular. The colors of the bricks are so interesting. I loved how some of the ruins are leaning.

Just for info, the structures that are rounded at the top are called Prangs & the ones with pointed tops are Chedis. The Buddha's relics were stored in these structures. The entire ensemble made up a Wat...I think.

Jim Thompson

One of my favorite treats in Bangkok is going to the Jim Thompson store. For those of you unfamiliar with Jim Thompson, he was an American Architect who lived in Bangkok & worked with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) at the end of WWII. He adored Bangkok & became enamored with silk weaving & design. At that time, the silk industry in Thailand was tiny & only for local use. Jim Thompson was responsible for "nurturing a worldwide appeal for Thai silk" & creating a brand that is "synonymous with quality & innovation". The Jim Thompson House is a wonderful example of classic Thai architecture & is filled with Thai antiques. Jim Thompson mysteriously disappeared in 1967 when he went for an afternoon walk in the Cameron Highlands of Malaysia, where we was vacationing with friends.

I went to the main store on Monday, January 22nd. I left the store with two large bags, so I decided to go to the Oriental Hotel (my favorite) & leave my bags with the conceirge. Why not?
I ended up having a delightful lunch there & feeling very nostalgic for the time that the girls & I (along with the ex) stayed there on our trip in 1999.

While in the restaurant, there were a few people with ear pieces (like the Secret Service in the US wear) checking out the restaurant. Shortly afterwards, some official looking people came in & sat at a table - turned out to the the Premier Minister. It was interesting to see that the Minister's exchanges with the waitresses seemed so kind & discrete. Of course, the waitresses were crouched on bended knee when talking with the Minister in order to be lower than him.

Aside from shopping at Jim Thompson, the next biggest treat of the day was returning home via the river taxi. What a delight it was to see Bangkok from the Chao Phraya River. The boat was full of commuters & young kids coming back from school. I took the boat around 5ish & the trip took approx. 45 minutes. Everyone on the boat was dozing off except me! What a nice way to commute between work & home.

The picture below is an example of what I was looking at.

The Blue Elephant

I had never mentioned to Cecile that I was looking into cooking schools in BKK & low & behold one of her Xmas presents was a cooking class at The Blue Elephant. I was supposed to be there at 8:45am (on the 22nd) & since I am staying quite a distance away from the school PLUS getting there in rush hour - all that took some careful planning & advice from Veronique & Pierre. I ended up taking a taxi to the closest Skytrain (45 minutes) & then the Skytrain to the stop right in front of the Blue Elephant.

The Skytrain is super - an elevated Metro - efficient, clean, easy to use, crowded but no one pushes.

It is clearly marked where the doors of the skytrain will be & people wait in lines at those markings, like 3 lines per door. Then everyone just moves in in a very organized manner. There are TVs on each side of the car, in each section, with ads, videos & announcing the next station.I think it helps also because the majority of people here are attractive, well-dressed, &/or downright gorgeous. Needless to say, I arrived 20 minutes early at The Blue Elephant.

I relaxed & drank lemongrass tea out of a china pot shaped liked an elephant & waited for the others to arrive. Two other women & myself were taken to a local market selling fruits, veg, fish, meats, etc. & our guide explained things to us. She showed us a woman making rice crepes that are used for spring rolls, etc. I saw all the different types of Thai basil, Thai vegetables, people scrapping fish meat by hand for fish balls & fish patties, and more.

This is a block of palm sugar that the Thai's use a lot in their cooking. It looks & smells much like brown sugar.

These are a male & female fish - it's the male that has the blue lips - sexy!

The photo below is the lady who makes the rice paper crepes. She has a glob of dough in her hand & she wipes it over the pan so that only a tiny bit adheres to the hot surface. It cooks instantly & she only cooks one side.

Needless to say, it was very interesting & now when I go to my Korean market in Silver Spring, I will know what to look for!

The Blue Elephant is a well known restaurant & cooking school, with schools all over the world.

It is very well organized & the entire morning turned out to be so interesting & fun. There were 9 people in the class - one man from Chili who was taking the classes everyday this week, some travel agents from the US & Malaysia here for a conference, a couple from Seattle & moi.
We watched a demonstration of how each dish was prepared, along with a discussion of ingredients, etc. We would then taste the dish & then we went into the large kitchen lab & prepared the dish ourselves. We each had a space with cooking board, ingredients, stone mortar & pestle (yes, we pounded the paste, etc. BY HAND) & a gas burner. The staff would come along & help, give instructions, etc. Once that dish was finished, we put our number on the dish & went back into the demonstration room for the next dish.

We made a total of 5 dishes - red curry paste, coconut soup with chicken, squid salad with lemon grass, red curry beef & pumpkin & deep fried fish with spicy sauce. We then arrived in a private dining room in the restaurant & found our own creations to eat. It was delicious & fun. I hope to re-create all the dishes back in Bethesda!

I enjoyed it so much that I am hoping that Veronique & I will go on Friday. She has never been & I think she would enjoy it just as much as I did. Plus, since we don't have to go to the market, we can sleep a bit later!

That's all for today. Thank you all for your comments. So much fun to read.

Love to all.

To be continued.....